


Give Place Unto Wrath

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 00:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3998857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not about vengeance, Matt tells himself.  His anger isn't the point.  The point is justice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Place Unto Wrath

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by the 3/1/15 [15_minute_ficlets](http://15_minute_ficlets.dreamwidth.org) word #222. The title is from the KJV translation of Romans 12:19, because I like the misleading ambiguity of its phrasing.

It's not about vengeance, Matt tells himself. He's angry, yes: furious at a world that contains so many and varied horrors, and more so at the people who contribute to that darkness, either intentionally or through apathy and refusal to see. But his anger isn't the point. The point is justice.

He believes in the law. Maybe some people can make it through law school and the bar exam on a desire for money or power, but he needed a stronger motivation to rub his fingertips raw and turn his brain to porridge on all his textbooks. He believes in order, in safeguards, in a network of rules pieced together one law and ruling at a time to protect people's lives and liberties as best as anyone knows how.

But sometimes those safeguards backfire. Sometimes those careful clauses twist in the mouths of liars, or are torn asunder by the pressure of evil men.

And so, the suit and the mask and all the rest of it. The violence, in all its painful catharsis. The constant knowledge that he's breaking what he's sworn to uphold, in the name of a higher cause.

But it's not revenge. Not on his own behalf. Not even on behalf of the victims of crimes he interrupts, or the ones he finds too late. It's not.

Matt tells himself that as he sucks in a shuddering breath and steps away from the pair of would-be robbers. Their blood sits damp and tacky on his hands, tiny bits of flesh mixed in with the fluid where his knuckles gouged deep into their skin. He can hear their wounds leak onto the cheap linoleum floor, the splintered edges of their bones grate where he shattered them, their teeth shift loose and unrooted in their jaws. He can feel the scream in his own shoulders, the bruises blooming over his ribs where one asshole got in a lucky swing.

As always, something inside him unwinds at the evidence of carnage. At the infliction of pain, turned back on those who deal injury to the innocent.

His anger flares again at the memory of the clerk's furious scream, echoing outward through the walls of the little corner liquor store, at the frantic pounding of her heart and the blood pouring from her cheek and lip, cut open by the jagged edges of a broken vodka bottle in retaliation for the alarm button she'd managed to press. She ran the minute he crashed into the shop, got out and away through the back door and left him a free field to work. She's as safe as anyone ever gets in Hell's Kitchen these days.

But safe isn't the same as unharmed. Safe isn't the same as unworried, unafraid. He can't make that mistake, not when he hears Karen's breath catch at odd moments during the day, smells the alcohol and excess makeup that accompany too many sleepless nights. Not when he hears Foggy's heart race whenever a new story about Fisk's unraveling empire hits the news, feels the tension in his hands when he guides Matt along the sidewalks. Not when he calls Claire and hears the ragged edges of nightmare still clinging to her voice.

And they're the lucky ones. The survivors.

When he thinks of all the people he's been too late to save...

The sound of sirens yanks him from his thoughts, and Matt unclenches his fingers one by one, concentrates on the blood rushing to refill compressed flesh, tries to let his anger go.

The police are only two streets away now, racing to answer the silent alarm and whatever calls the clerk and any passersby may have made. He may not be a suspected terrorist anymore, may not be under a shoot-to-kill order, but it's still wiser to stay out of sight and out of mind as much as he can. The guns on the floor carry their damning coats of fingerprints and the clerk will be able to testify once she returns. He doesn't need to make a report.

One of the robbers stirs, hand groping vaguely toward his boot. Matt doesn't wait to see what he might have hidden there. He brings his foot down hard on the man's wrist, savors the tactile shock as bones snap and ligaments tear, smiles at the breathless, strangled scream that keens from the man's throat.

It's no more than he deserves, after all, pain repaid for pain.

But this is not about vengeance, Matt repeats as he leaves the store, leaps upward, catches the edge of a fire escape and pulls himself to the roof.

If he tells himself that often enough, he might even make it true.


End file.
